Cover has some wear; pages have light wear; pages appear to be unmarked. ISBN 9780834402423
In addition to her diabetes and Hoshimoto’s thyroiditis, my wife, Joan, also experiences a disease called pernicious anemia. Notice that I did not say that she “suffers from a disease … I purposefully did not say that because, actually, if you were to meet and spend time with Joan a hundred times a month, you’d never guess anything is wrong with her. I smile as I write this introduction at the thought of our church friends discovering, for the first time, that the radiant, joy-filled lady, who blesses their lives from week to week, deals with these diseases behind the scenes. Yet, we’ve discovered over the years that of the three diseases, the one that needs to be watched carefully is the pernicious anemia. It’ll sneak up on you before you know it. It’ll rob you of your strength and energy. You’ll probably keep going on sheer momentum, but, until you replenish your Vitamin B12, every activity will become a real effort. That’s the way it is with Joan.
I’m convinced that by the time Jesus the Messiah began his ministry in the Palestinian hills, a severe outbreak of spiritual anemia of the most pernicious sort had erupted. Business-as-usual religiosity robbed people of their spiritual strength and energy. Religious practices continued, but only the momentum from previous generations kept them going. The life was gone out of them. Into this situation Jesus comes with his platform for a new humanity. We’ve come to call it the Sermon on the Mount. He proposes that it is high time for a spiritual revolution. Emaciated, skeletal remains of bygone religion must be replaced by fiber and muscle. A journey must be undertaken out of the shadow land of spiritual anemia, across the threshold of energizing relationship with the eternal, and into the earthly rehabilitation of this new humanity - the Power Zone.
